Hawaii may not be the number one vacation destination these days, but the state remains a leader.
No, it’s not college volleyball. Both University of Hawaii men’s and women’s teams have trouble cracking the Top 10 the past few years. Breaking out of the Top 10, maybe. The UH football Warriors, even undefeated, don’t rate a spot in the Top 10.
Hawaii leads the nation in killer germs.
More specifically known as MRSA, Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, this superbug is resistant to antibiotics. It’s the ultimate killing machine; the flesh eating bacteria of science fiction stories. It’s easy to contract, and it kills swiftly.
Staphylococcus bacteria have been around for thousands and thousands of years. The deadliest strain is MRSA which infects Hawaii residents at a rate twice the national average. Native Hawaiians are more likely to have staph infections, too.
Local TV station KHNL reports that over 200 Hawaii residents die of MRSA related infections every year.
While the disease is being taken seriously by school administrators and hospital staff, each focusing efforts on education and hygiene, what of the 6 or 7-million tourists planning a trip to Hawaii?
First, there’s national news of a massive sewage spill in Waikiki’s Ala Wai Canal, then, more bad news when a man dies of a bacterial infection from water in the canal. Now there’s news of 200 people a year dying in Hawaii from a flesh-eating bacteria.
This is one time when being number one in the nation is not good for Hawaii.
Well… Sorta,
It’s true that Hawaii has a high incidence of MRSA infections. But you don’t mention that the majority of the MRSA that can be found in Hawaii is sensitive to other antibiotics such as clindamycin and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole. Also the MRSA found in Hawaii tends to cause skin abscesses and relatively minor infections, and not raging systemic infections as are caused by the hospital aquired MRSA on the mainland. Finally the MRSA in Hawaii is not primarily aquired in the hospital, but instead can be found in the ocean water. All in all, methecillin resistance seems to be common in the wild in Hawaii, but it doesn’t necessarily come with all of the other factors that make the hospital aquired MRSA so nasty.
Aloha
Andrew Gilbert MD